DailyTech has obtained a couple of images of an upcoming motherboard for AMD’s 4x4 enthusiast platform. The motherboard is an ASUS L1N64-SLI WS powered by two NVIDIA nForce 680a MCPs. Two socket-1207 processors are supported with four memory slots—two slots per processor. With two nForce 680a MCPs the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS features 12 SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and one PATA for storage connectivity. There’s also an additional e.SATA port on the back I/O as well.

As far as PCI Exress goes the L1N64-SLI WS features a grand total of four PCI Express x16 slots for plenty of SLI and SLI physics processing power. Due to space limitations the L1N64-SLI WS only has one PCI and PCIe x1 slots.

Due to the complex design of AMD’s 4x4 platform, the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS uses an eATX form factor which will not fit in smaller cases. Since dual processors require a little extra power, ASUS has equipped the L1N64-SLI WS with an 8-pin EPS12v and Molex power connectors.

U.S. distributors claim the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS will have an MSRP of $480 without bundles, but the street price will probably be much less.

There is lot of evidence. Check Core2 Duo benchmarks, two Core2 cores at 2.4GHz (E6600) are faster than two Athlon64 cores at 2.8GHz (FX-62), clockspeed difference is 16%.

In this case, it will be four Core2 cores at 2.67GHz (Kentsfield) against four Athlon64 cores at 3GHz (4x4), clockspeed difference will be 13%. 4x4 will have more bandwidth, which will provide advantage, but Kentsfield will have serious price/performance advantage unless AMD starts selling 3GHz Athlon64-FXs at $400...

Another downside of 4x4 is that adding more memory is impossible, since there is only one DIMM slot per memory channel. If you want to utilize all memory bandwidth, and want to increase memory capacity, you need to replace all four DIMMs.

quote: And even though we will migrate to 64 bit one way or the other, with Vista 64 bit NOT exactly the best, I will say that the memory argument is not yet valid for some time, and so, AMD for the winner.

Huh? How is AMD the winner? If you want 2GB on this board with full bandwidth you need to use 4x512MB, filling all the slots. God forbid you only need 1GB (obviously not likely with a high end board, but still...) then you're stuck with half the bandwidth or 4x256MB. Seems like a loser to me.